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River City Jazz Masters Preview, Newk, Tadd & More
Happy 89th birthday to Mr. Sonny Rollins! After some 21st century music from Hudson, Joshua Redman (his latest), UK pianist Zoe Rahman [whew!], Chicagoland's Geof Bradfield & Kamasi Washington, we preview the Baton Rouge River City Jazz Masters 2019-2020 season at the Manship Theatre (Eddie Palmieri, Eric Alexander [with Harold Mabern], Nicholas Payton AND Jazzmeia Horn)! It's gonna be good, you bet. We continue our chronological celebration of Sonny Rollins-- tracks with the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet. This ...
read moreKen Vandermark with Kris Davis/Hamid Drake/Paul Lytton/Ikue Mori/William Parker: Momentum 4: Consequent Duos 2015>2019 (Box Set)
When reed player and composer Ken Vandermark launched his recording career in 1995, he did so with the deceptively titled Standards (Quinnah Records). Free improvisations with titles like “Rage for Speaking" and “A Sick Man's Dreams" indicated a different view of the agreed-upon definition. And so, it has been and has evolved, over nearly twenty-five years of creating spontaneous music, that Vandermark pushes the envelope, never content to stay at the preceding destination. He continues to challenge himself and his ...
read moreBrötzmann / Schlippenbach / Bennink: Fifty Years After...
To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the game changing recording Machine Gun (BRÖ, 1968), saxophonist Peter Brötzmann recruited drummer Han Bennink from the original session, plus pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach. While Schlippenbach wasn't in the house for Machine Gun (the pianist was Fred Van Hove), he can be heard on the Peter Brötzmann Group's fully automatic Alarm (FMP, 1983). Interestingly, to produce the fierce sound of Machine Gun, Brötzmann utilized an octet and likewise, Alarm was a meaty ...
read moreMuster: Find A City To Live In
Muster consists of electric guitarist James O'Sullivan from South London and electronicist Dan Powell from Brighton, some fifty miles away. This duo was formed accidentally in November 2016, when Powell was supposed to be playing in another duo as part of a Catford Constitutional improv night; the other member couldn't make it, so Powell and O'Sullivan formed an ad hoc duo, having previously played together at the London manifestation of the Long Half Day, twelve hours of continuous improvisation with ...
read moreJohn Coltrane: Blue World
Discovering old and forgotten audio tapes of a jazz icon like John Coltrane is always exciting, but their posthumous release can have mixed motives. Taking advantage of the musician's name to make money is less salutary than, say, providing more great music for the public or providing opportunities for enthusiasts and scholars to fill in gaps and trace the musician's progress. Always in the background is the question of whether the musician would have permitted their release if he or ...
read moreKing Crimson at Paramount Theatre
King Crimson Paramount Theatre Denver, CO September 8, 2019 Every band should have three drummers. No, wait, every band needs three drummers. King Crimson proved that Sunday night with, not just three drummers, but three drummers right up front. Well, maybe two and half drummers; drummer Jeremy Stacey spent half his time on keyboards including the all important mellotron. But, no matter how you cut it, all that percussion right up front created ...
read moreIngi Bjarni Skúlason: Tenging
Icelandic composer and pianist Ingi Bjarni Skúlason lived in Gotheburg, Copenhagen and Oslo while studying his Masters degree in composition. It is in these European cities where he met and performed with the musicians heard on this record. Jakob Eri Myhre and Merje Kägu join on trumpet and guitar with Daniel Andersson and Tore Ljøkelsøy forming the rhythm section on bass and drums. The music on Tenging was conceived especially with them in mind, not necessarily the specific instrumentation, but ...
read moreTish Oney: The Best Part
Dr. Tish Oney is a woman for all seasons: vocalist, arranger, composer, professor, producer. She has many irons in many fires and all of them are hot. Her fifth recording, The Best Part continues her fruitful association with guitarist John Chiodini, whose trio this time around comprised bassist Chuck Berghofer and drummer Ray Brinker (no mean company). This guitar-led trio provides Oney with a spare and sophisticated place from which to launch her vocal musings. Stylistically, Oney has ...
read moreTrio Treats
This episode is dominated by trios, perhaps the most popular format in jazz today. Steve Lehman's new The People I Love debuts (with the addition of the formidable pianist Craig Taborn), definitely a must-hear for 2019. Golden Valley Is Now reunites Taborn with Dave King and Reid Anderson (they all grew up together), while another threesome that's very comfortable together is saxophonist Stephen Gauci, bassist Adam Lane and drummer Kevin Shea. They're the house band at the Bushwick in Brooklyn. ...
read moreBrandon Robertson and The Quiet Temple
This week new releases from Brandon Robertson and The Quiet Temple are featured there's also a host of recent albums with a mix of jazz and free improvisation..... Playlist Brandon Robertson “Stablemates" from Bass'd On A True Story (Slammin Media) 00:00 Pat Thomas, John Butcher, Ståle Liavik Solberg “The Solution" from Fictional Souvenirs (Astral Spirits) 07:34 The Quiet Temple “The Last Opium Den (On Earth)" from The Quiet Temple (Wichita Recordings/Point of Departure) 18:22 Frode Gjerstad “Part 3" from Season ...
read morePearring Sound: Nothing But Time
A protégé—and collaborator—of the late, great pianist Connie Crothers, Colorado native, and Brooklyn resident Jeff Pearring has a wide-ranging background encompassing genre from reggae to classical, to jazz. Beyond a physical resume, it is his relationship with Crothers where Pearring reveals himself to be a voracious student of musical history with an equally insatiable appetite to explore new territory. On his previous self-produced album, True Story (2018), Pearring led a group that included Crothers, on her final studio recording, bassist ...
read moreMario Pavone Dialect Trio: Philosophy
In his review of their debut Chrome (Playscape Recordings, 2013), my learned colleague at All About Jazz, Dan McClenaghan described Mario Pavone's Dialect Trio as “a beautiful tumult." That description expanded with the trio's sophomore disc Blue Dialect (Clean Feed, 2015) and maybe further with their latest Philosophy. The maelstrom they foment is partly explained by their schedules. Drummer Tyshawn Sorey is a composer of jazz and new classical music and multi-instrumentalist—check out his piano chops on That/Not (Firehouse 12 ...
read moreShowcase
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Roma by Enrico Rava
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Playing The Room by Avishai Cohen - Trumpet
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It's Morning by Led Bib
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A Moment of You by Daniela Soledade
